1595: Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library 1738: John Wesley is converted, launching the Methodist movement; celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day 1844: Samuel Morse taps out “What hath God wrought” in the world’s first telegraph message 1941: German battleship Bismarck sinks the British battle cruiser HMS Hood; 1,416 die, 3 survive […]
1618: Second Defenestration of Prague: Two Catholic Lords Regent and their secretary are thrown out of a window and amazingly are not seriously injured by the 70 foot (21m) fall. Triggers the Thirty Years’ War. 1785: Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals 1813: South American independence leader Simón Bolívar enters Mérida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El […]
334: BC The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus 1570: 1st atlas ‘Theatrum Orbis Terrarum’ (Theatre of the World), published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp with 70 maps 1843: 1st wagon train with 700 – 1000 migrants, departs Independence, Missouri for Oregon 1939: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sign “Pact of Steel” in Berlin, […]
1792: Mount Unzen on Japan’s Shimabara Peninsula, erupts creating a tsunami, killing about 15,000; Japan’s deadliest volcanic eruption 1832: 1st US Democratic National Convention held in Baltimore 1871: -July 28] French regular troops attack Commune of Paris; 17,000 die 1927: Aviator Charles Lindbergh, in the Spirit of St Louis, lands in Paris after the first solo air crossing of Atlantic […]
1498: Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut, India becoming the first European to reach India by sea 1609: Shakespeare’s Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by publisher Thomas Thorpe 1862: US President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act to provide cheap land for the settlement of the American West (80 million acres by 1900) 1864: Spotsylvania campaign […]
1536: Anne Boleyn, second wife of English King Henry VIII, is beheaded at the Tower of London on charges of adultery, incest and treason 1643: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Harbor form the United Colonies of New England 1649: England is declared a Commonwealth by an act of the Rump Parliament making England a republic for the next […]
1291: After 100 years of Crusader control, Acre is the last Crusader stronghold reconquered and destroyed by the Mamluks under Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor of France by the French Senate 1896: Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field, Moscow, during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, results in the deaths of […]
1527: Pánfilo de Narváez departs Spain to explore Florida with 600 men – by 1536 only 4 survive 1792: 24 merchants form New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street 1803: John Hawkins & Richard French patent the Reaping Machine 1973: Senate Watergate Committee begins its hearings 2004: Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage 2014: The center-right […]
1920: Joan of Arc (Jeanne D’arc) canonized a saint 1943: Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs 1944: 1st of 180,000+ Hungarian Jews reach Auschwitz 1989: Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift 2013: Human stem cells are successfully […]
1252: Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition 1618: German astronomer Johannes Kepler discovers the third of his three planetary laws his “harmonics law” 1869: National Woman Suffrage Association forms in New York, founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1940: Richard and Maurice McDonald open the […]
